Theme 1: Resilient, net-zero and circular production systems
1 Understanding CASRI
1.1 CASRI conceptual framework
CASRI will follow 3 key premises of ES R&I to address major sustainability challenges, dstinguishing between the following knowledge needs:
- Systemic - Transitional sustainability challenges must be addressed systemically: Knowledge on systemic links is essential for tackling sustainability challenges. More work in unison is required for the various fields and stakeholders working on solutions to the crises. Moreover, we will better understand future challenges through foresight that integrates the various systems.
- Transversal - multi-level, multi-actor governance is needed for transformation: Networks engaging public-private-societal actors in multi-level governance in a transdisciplinary way are needed in R&I co-creation and implementation. An integrated approach needs to address the different societal challenges and needs. Sustainable decision-making is about addressing nature,economy and society, without shifting problems to future generations.
- Actionable - Knowledge must effect action: CASRI will seek and facilitate action bridging research, policy and practice. This includes fields of behavioural and social sciences to help policy-makers and society overcome such dilemmas. The guiding principle is to make it clear to decision-makers that the price of inaction or halfmeasures are far greater than sound solutions to the crises guided by science.
2 Results
The stock take of knowledge needs totaled to 253 research priorities throughout 14 countries. 233 knowledge needs were expressed directly through interacting with NKS on the thematic focus, and 20 research priorities that have been obtained.
In this section we present the results as obtained from the
Europe-wide inventarisation. We present the results by clustering them
to 4 societal challenges, namely:
- Security
- Digitalisation
- Regulatory efficiency & Competitiveness and
- Democracy & Participation
Results are normalized by calculating the proportion of
each knowledge need per:
- Key issue
- Region
-
Knowledge ecosystem (limited to industrial and system-wide knowledge
ecosystems) and
- Mode of knowledge production (mode 1 (linear) and
mode 2 (coproduction)).
2.1 Prioritised knowledge needs on a topical level
In the first level of clustering around cross-cutting subthemes we find that the results have scattered around the CASRI partner regions in a variety of ways:
Security: Overall the inquiry has yielded the greatest diversity of result under the thematic umbrella of ‘security’. The interpretation of security entails geopolitical influence but extents to a wider definition by also including strategic autonomy, availability of resources and specific vulnerabilities for regions (e.g. climate and pollution related risks) in its scope. Given how the stock take of knowledge needs has taken place in the time during the invasion of Ukraine, high energy prices and waning geopolitical stability (Draghi, 2024), a frequent reoccuring prioritised knowledge need relates to the ‘availability of resources’. Common concerns are expressed about a (lowered) need for (low carbon and circular) synthetic or natural resources to drive or feed into the various economies, and the risks that exist with the paradigmatic shifts in (geo)politics.For other key issues the spread is quite diverse, with no clear common pattern arising from the data. However, some notable observations can be made on the regional level. For example, the Anglo-celtic CASRI regions, together with several of the represented Slavic CASRI regions, share concern for environmental pollution and climate risk. Across Belgium and Netherlands concerns are expressed about the volume and quality of surface area. More concentrated around the south-eastern CASRI regions are concerns about natural resources, particularly related to the agricultural sector and the availability and quality of water. Several just once prioritised issues circle around the availability of human capital (Ireland), or financial capabilities (Switzerland) to support the transition towards a ‘resilient, net-zero and circular production system’.
Digitalisation: Digitalisation, while articulated, is a relatively infrequently prioritised topic in relation to sustainable industrial transformation. Research needs are mostly expressed around the promise of resource and energy efficiency by improved automation, as well as new virtual technologies that could improve the tracking and tracing of components (e.g. block chain or digital twins).
Regulatory efficiency & competitiveness Public-oriented innovations in institutional and regulatory systems are prioritised across the board throughout Europe. No specific pattern becomes visible in the data, although all knowledge needs address in one way or another the need for more coordinated action across the transformative challenges and the various actors and agencies involved (effort, resources). This entails clarity on the roles of actors and agencies, and an administrative system that supports modern and future processes and products (reform of current taxes and subsidies, decision making processes, business models).
Democracy & Participation The articulation of public-oriented innovation around industrial ecosystems has occurred in a lower frequency. The influence of social actors and institutions is mentioned around anglo-celtic and germanic speaking countries. These prioritized knowledge needs revolve around mediating driving an obstructive forces around equitable socio-technological change. Additionally needs around clarifying and smoothening the roles of agents around entire value chains.More sporadically in the data are knowledge needs on Equity, Education and Regional potentials. These issues mostly describe needs around facilitation of (near term) transformative change, on a personal to institutional level.
Continue reading about other knowledge needs
Aside from these cross-cutting subthemes other knowledge needs have been expressed. These needs could be grouped under more traditional R&I objectives or traditional to the task field of the local environmental protection agencies (see Supplementary Information annex E for details).
Multiple knowledge needs expressed needs around promoting, testing or utilizating new, more efficient or alternative production technologies in various industrial value chains (such as metals, industrial carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, waste, additive industry, agriculture or chemicals). Other needs focused more on alternative products and designs that are more durable, environmental friendly and circular.
On more environmental oriented public innovation needs focused on the amalgation of various policy challenges and the need to develop integrated knowledge that can bridge the gap between the various objectives and decision levels involved. Further, methodological development had been coined second, indicating needs around broadly accepted tools and processes and actionable metrics and indicators of progress to be used in decision making.
In more sporadic cases some knoweldge needs had been expressed about public, personal and private responsibility, mostly related to sufficiency and consumption.
Explore all the addressed key issues in ES R&I across the various CASRI regions:
2.2 Knowledge needs
2.2.1 Potential transnational common?
By ignoring the regional dimension, compounding all the knowledge need contributions per implied key issue and prioritising the more cross-cutting contributions (meaning that contributions must have addressed systemic, transversal and actionable in conjunction in some way) with greater numbers of countries contributing to it, one can rank the contributions on a plot (see Figure 4). For specific Subthemes it becomes clear that knowledge needs across various key issues are articulated as distinct (hotspots on the plot) or isolated to a specific functional type (apex), for other Subthemes the knowledge needs across the addressed key issues are more diffuse without specificity. Several key issues per Subtheme come out top by the proposed definition, although no internal consistency is guaranteed for the underlaying priorities per key issue (due to differences in regional or actor context).
| Subtheme | Mode | Key issues | Ecosystem | rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Other | Mode 1 | Innovation | Industrial | 1 |
| Security | Mode 1 | Security of resource supply | Industrial | 2 |
| Security | Mode 1 | Security of resource supply | System-wide | 3 |
| Digitalisation | Mode 1 | Digital tools & efficiency | Industrial | 4 |
| Democracy & Participation | Mode 2 | Equity | System-wide | 5 |
| Other | Mode 1 | Integrative thinking | System-wide | 6 |
| Security | Mode 1 | Climate Risk | System-wide | 7 |
| Democracy & Participation | Mode 1 | Actor influence | System-wide | 8 |
| Democracy & Participation | Mode 2 | Coordination | System-wide | 9 |
| Other | Mode 1 | Innovation | System-wide | 10 |
Continue reading about the regional differences by clicking here
Knowledge needs: Regional result per Subtheme
By attributing all the knowledge needs to the 4 cross-cutting subthemes
(Security, Digitalisation, Democracy & Participation, Regulatory
efficiency & competitiveness, and rest category “Other”) one can
analyse on a higher-order level the direction of knowledge needs per
region. During the stock take of knowledge needs, all needs have been
classified to one or multiple apexes of the conceptual model.
Additionally we group the knowledge needs to (1) industrial innovation
ecosystems or (2) broader public-oriented innovation. By calculating the
proportion of these knowledge needs across the cross-cutting themes,
their ecosystem, key issue and country, one can see the general patterns
as found in the data.
We find that the stock take mostly delivered broader public-oriented knowledge needs, looking at systemic transformative potential and how to leverage it (Figure 3). We see that particularly key issues around ‘security’ and ‘regulatory efficiency & competitiveness’ share a greater diversity of knowledge needs across the regions (more coloured area). This would imply that these issues are approached quite transdisciplinary across various regions, although they remain more on an inter or multidisciplinarity level (referred to as mode 1 research in Gibbons et al., 1994). Higher concentration of ‘Democracy & Participation’ needs are expressed on public valuation and other types of knowledge production (referred to as mode 2 research in Gibbons et al., 1994).
The topic of ‘digitalisation’ has been framed more in line with specific industrial innovation ecosystems, with a specific orientation towards more political (transversal) and applied knowledge (actionable) needs. ‘Other’ knowledge needs are also positioned more frequently on an industrial innovation ecosystems context, showing a more scattered pattern across the regions on the type of knowledge need. Notable is the absence of any expressed knowledge needs on mode 2 for more specific industrial innovation ecosystems.
Knowledge needs: Regional result on geographical
level In regards to the geographic level in which knowledge
needs are considered relevant, we see that most of them are expressed in
the transnational level (see Figure 4). Needs with a general higher
level of multi-scale implications show to be more diverse (both lower
(R-N-E) as higher (N-E-I) transnational level). More local or inherently
supranational knowledge needs are more distinct to either systemic
needs, or actionable needs.
Knowledge needs: Regional result on impact
expectation The majority of expressed knowledge needs imply
impact on the short-to-medium term (shorter term) which travel around
the triangle to various degrees (see Figure 5). Fewer knowledge needs
with longer term impacts (longer term) have been expressed with a higher
proportion of systemic knowledge oriented needs.
3 Contact
Author: Mariësse van Sluisveld Contact: mariesse.vansluisveld@pbl.nl